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7 Great Mobile Apps for Environmentally Friendly Eating

The seemingly small eating choices that we all make every day can have a huge cumulative effect on the environment.

Choosing in-season fruits and vegetables, local produce, less meat and foods that are grown with fewer pesticides can make your impact on the Earth a bit lighter.

Keeping track of all the information you need to make the right choices can be a bit overwhelming, but these seven mobile apps store all you need to know in your pocket. Be sure to let us know in the comments which apps you found most helpful or what you plan to do start eating environmentally friendly.

Nobody wants to destroy ecosystems when they go out for sushi, but trying to factor in where each species of fish was caught, what region it comes from, or how it was farmed can seem like a full-time job when picking where to eat.

The people who do, in fact, dedicate themselves to full-time study of the planet's water systems have mercifully created an iPhone app and mobile site to provide a guide for your seafood decisions. Search fish by name for the best choice (salmon, for instance, should be wild-caught in Alaska), good alternatives (wild-caught in Washington), and what to avoid (farmed, Atlantic-caught or wild-caught in California), and reference a best practice guide for your region.

On Tuesday, the aquarium also added a new "Project FishMap" component to the app that helps you share restaurants and markets you've found that sell sustainable seafood. Eventually, the crowdsourced map will be a resource for finding ocean-friendly seafood wherever you are.

The modern-day grocery store has created a problem that would have been absurd to our ancestors. With produce being shipped from all over the world, it's difficult to tell what is actually in season near you.

Locavore ($2.99) tells you what is currently in season in your region so that you can make purchasing decisions that reduce your carbon footprint. It also provides recipes that use all in-season ingredients and shows you nearby farmers markets where you can buy those ingredients.

If you connect the app to your Facebook account, you can share where you came across especially stellar local produce and read what other people near you have discovered.

The jury is still out on the health and environmental impact of genetically modified food like the "botox apple," but genetically modified (GMO) foods still go unlabeled and are difficult to avoid.

The Center for Food Safety, which runs campaigns to halt the approval of GMO foods, has iPhone and Android apps that help shoppers identify genetically modified food. The app gives the low-down on the approval statuses of GMO items in major food groups and highlights tips for avoiding GMO foods in general.

As the title indicates, this app from the Pesticide Action Network helps you figure out what pesticides are on your food before you buy it. According to the app, an apple has a potential 42 residues, for instance.

The app comes with a helpful chart if you want to know which ones are neurotoxins, hormone disruptors, carcinogens, or developmental or reproductive toxins. Though by that point, you might already be standing in the organic section.

Like the Locavore app, Seasons ($1.99) helps consumers buy products that are in-season in their region. In addition to fruits and vegetables, it also keeps track of herbs, nuts and mushrooms broken down by whether they're in-season, at the start of their season, at the end of their season or produced year-round in your area. Each food includes a graph that shows both import and local seasons.

Because many consumers prefer environmentally conscious options when available, companies are eager to label their products as such. In some cases, however, the labels are more indicative of greenwashing than of reduced environmental impact.

Shoppers can use Label Lookup to understand what 169 different green labels mean and how reliable they are. "GMO-Free," for instance, is too vague to be reliable. "American Grassfed," however, is thirdy-party verified and meets detailed standards.

Whether or not you're a vegetarian, reducing the amount of meat that you eat can reduce the impact your diet has on the environment. And it doesn't need to be painful; you can easily find great vegan, vegetarian and vegetarian-friendly restaurants using mobile app VegOut ($2.99).

The app is powered by happycow.net, a vegetarian-friendly restaurant search engine with more than 13,000 listings around the world. It uses your location to show you the restaurants nearest you, but you can also search by zipcode if you're planning to dine elsewhere.

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